


Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

by xshadowphantom



Series: The Tragedy of Lazarus [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (he gets one!), Aftermath of Suicide Attempt, Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, emotions are the batfam’s specialty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xshadowphantom/pseuds/xshadowphantom
Summary: Dick’s had enough of the people he loves falling to their deaths.(the long-awaited sequel to Lazarus.)
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Series: The Tragedy of Lazarus [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077581
Comments: 12
Kudos: 139





	Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up three years later with a coffee and a sequel*
> 
> dedicated to all the lovely people who still comment on lazarus in 2020 asking if there will be more. congrats lads. there’s more.

There’s blood on his hands.

It itches and scratches and burrows into his palms no matter how much he scrubs, no matter how raw his palms are rubbed, no matter how long it’s been since the last flakes of half-dried blood swirled away down the drain. He feels like Lady Macbeth.

( _‘Out, damned spot!’_ quotes a voice in his head that sounds far too much like a little brother from years ago.)

( _‘Bye, Bruce’_ , whispers the same voice, older and filled with so much more pain.)

He shuts his eyes against the image of Jason tipping over the edge of a building, but the memory is burned into the insides of his eyelids and the darkness only helps illuminate the snapshots.

The motion-activated faucet buzzes to life once more, and he realizes his hands are shaking violently. The cold water jolts him out of his daze, though, and Dick abandons the dry scrubbing to splash some of the water onto his face.

He spots his reflection in the mirror above the sink, and takes in for the first time his haggard appearance. His reflection is pale and exhausted and he thinks how dare he, _how dare he_ look so tired and empty and broken when Jason is the one who—

(The snap of the rope, the terrified screams, and the gasps of the crowd echo in his head. He thinks that now there’s going to be a third person falling in those nightmares.)

(He can never protect them. They’re never safe, none of them. Mom-Dad-Bruce-Barbara-Tim-DamianKoriWallyJa—)

The mirror shatters beneath his fist.

(It’s fine, Bruce can afford to replace it.)

He only mildly regrets his decision when he sees the several small pieces of glass that have lodged themselves into his already tender hands. Fresh blood slides down the side of his hand from the deepest of the cuts, dripping into the sink where it mixes with the water in the basin to create the illusion of thick, dark, pooling puddles.

(There had been so much blood when he and Jason had hit first the ground, and there had been a terrible minute where he thought that his little brother had shot himself because Jason’s eyes were closed and there was blood in his hair, on his face—

But the blood had come when Jason’s head had hit the brick wall. Dick had tried his best to protect him, curling around him while they sped towards the solid surface, but Jason’s skull had still smacked against the wall with a _crack_ when they hit.)

His back twinges with the memory; turns out high-speed collisions with brick walls are pretty hard on the spine. There’s already an opaque blue blossoming on the delicate skin.

(He’d do it again, though, no question. He’d take a thousand bruises if it meant saving Jason.)

A glance at the clock tells him he’s been washing his hands for far too long, and he grabs a few paper towels before heading back to the waiting room of Gotham General.

The receptionist raises an eyebrow at the cuts on his hand, but says nothing as Dick takes up his watch in the same hard, plastic chair as before, foot tapping anxiously in time with the old analog clock above the front desk.

It’s surreal.

Two hours ago, he was in the Cave, teasing Damian about who even knows what, ruffling his hair and dodging the retaliatory nerve strikes.

Ninety minutes ago, he was cruising silently down the streets on his motorcycle, following the small red dot that marked Bruce’s location, racing towards what was presumably yet another stupid fight he’d inevitably have to break up. He remembers how light Tim’s voice had been as he teased Dick over the comms for basically being Jason and Bruce’s babysitter.

Seventy minutes ago, he was watching his little brother tip backwards over the ledge of a building, with nothing but the hard ground waiting to catch him.

• • •

When the grapple unwinds and they reach the ground, Dick knows he’s in a state of shock. His back is on fire and his hands are covered in Jason’s blood.

He lays his brother out on the dark concrete and his fingers scramble to check Jason’s body for injuries. He looks up towards the top of the roof and waits, expecting Bruce to come swinging down at any moment and tell him what to do, but that sweeping black cape never bursts into motion against the night sky.

”Batman!” He calls, even though logically he knows that Bruce won’t hear him from all the way down here.

(The building is so tall. Jason jumped off of it. He was going to die.)

Jason is bleeding in his lap, but it’s just from the spiderweb of cuts on the side of his temple and he’s breathing even though he’s lost consciousness.

(Head wounds bleed a lot. Jason is okay. He’s not going to die.)

Dick activates his comm and yells for Batman, yells for _Bruce_ , because code names be fucking damned, and demands to know what the hell he’s doing up there.

There’s still no answer, and suddenly he’s torn because he needs to go up there and check on Bruce but he can’t leave Jason alone when he’s hurt and bleeding, but what if Bruce is also hurt?

His spine flares in pain when he rotates his shoulders to grapple back up to the rooftop, and he makes a note to have Alfred take a look at it later and pushes the discomfort to the back of his mind.

The scene at the top is better than the one on the ground, but only marginally so.

Bruce isn’t bleeding, but he is frozen, still, shell-shocked, stuck in some flashback or other, and on the one hand Dick understands the trauma of being too late to save Jason two times in a row, but on the other hand he needs _help_ because Jason isn’t dead but who knows how hard he hit his head and that’s not even taking into account the fact that _Jason just tried to kill himself_ and Dick _doesn’t know what to do_.

He’s vaguely aware that he’s just about ready to spiral into a panic attack of his own as he presses down on the comm link in his ear and scrambles to get a message to the Batcave.

“Nightwing to Penny-One,” he says, “I need—” and he falters, because he doesn’t even know what the hell he needs as he glances between an unconscious brother on the ground and a catatonic father on the rooftop, “I need help, damnit!”

“Nightwing, please repeat. Shall I send reinforcements?” Alfred’s voice is soothing and steady when he responds, a single dry rock in a raging black ocean and Dick clings to it desperately as he fumbles to collect himself.

“No,” he says, “No, it’s not—. Fuck, Alfred, it’s Jason. He’s— I’m taking him to Gotham General. Someone needs to come get Bruce; I don’t know what to do.” Dick is trembling, his breathing irregular and his hands gripping at his hair just to stop them from shaking. He bites the bullet. “Jason jumped off the roof, Alfred. He was trying to kill himself.”

“I understand.” The reply is solemn but still calm, and Dick will never understand how Alfred manages to keep it together when Dick is millimeters away from falling apart. “Red Robin is en route to retrieve Batman. I’ve sent the car to meet you with a change of clothes for yourself and a more unassuming ensemble for Master Jason. Do keep me appraised of the situation.”

The line goes silent, and Dick is alone.

It’s surreal.

• • •

It’s well past three in the morning, and the coffee in his hands has long since gone cold by the time a nurse comes to fetch him.

“Family of John Peters?” She asks in a voice that is too kind for Gotham.

He nods.

She beckons, says: “Come with me,” and Dick is being led through endless expanses of hallway and it feels like a terrible dream and he still doesn’t understand how this is all happening.

“We’ll be keeping him here at least until tomorrow,” says the nurse, “He’ll need to be watched for the next 24 hours, probably longer, depending on how things progress. Now, Mr. Peters, does your brother have a history of depression? Has he ever shown signs of suicidal thoughts or displayed suicidal tendencies? Any prescriptions or medications we should know about?”

Dick shakes his head numbly. “Nothing,” he says, “We didn’t—I didn’t know.”

The nurse nods. “I can give you contact information for some good local therapists if your family would like to start looking into that. This is your brother’s room; I’ll give you two some time. If you need anything before I get back, you can press the call button by the bed.”

With that she’s gone, off to make her rounds, and Dick is alone in front of the door, hand resting on the handle, hesitant and unsure in a way that is unfamiliar and he hates it. He wonders if he should even go in. Will Jason want to see him? Should someone else go instead? He could call Alfred, or Tim, or Barbara, or Roy. They’re so much better with words. God, what if he goes in there and makes things worse? He’s so good at messing up when it comes to Jason.

(He’s being selfish. It should be him.)

(He opens the door.)

Jason is awake and sitting up in the bed, but his eyes are empty and emotionless, and Dick wonders if it’s the concussion or something worse. He clears his throat awkwardly in the stark white silence.

“Hi, Jay,” he says quietly.

Jason breathes in slowly and rubs a hand over his tired eyes. “If you’re here to yell at me you can save it,” he says, “Whatever you have to say, I’m sure B is going to cover it in his lecture later.”

Dick blinks, stunned. “I’m not gonna ye— Jason, you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? No one is mad at you.”

Jason eyes him cautiously in response. “So why are you here?”

(The pain in Dick’s chest at that has nothing to do with the bruises on his back.)

“Jay...” Dick hesitates. “You’re my brother. I’ll always come.”

Jason’s face contorts in preparation for a scathing retort that he aborts half a second later, biting his cheek against the words instead. He lets out a swear, scraping his nails against his scalp. “I can’t keep doing this, Dick,” he says.

Dick’s brow furrows into a maze of creases. “Jason, just tell me what’s going on,” he pleads.

Jason looks at the ceiling. His eyes are hard and dark and empty. “I knew I should have just written this down. The cliffsnotes? I’m fucking tired.”

(He looks it.)

“I’m tired of being angry and I’m tired of hurting you guys and I’m tired of letting everyone down. I know I’m the reason you and Bruce are always fighting. I know I shouldn’t instigate Damian all the time; the kid’s trying so hard to make Bruce proud of him and all I do is goad him into fighting with everyone. I know I make Alfred sad. He tries to hide it but I can see it every time we talk and I want to be better, for him, but I can’t. And I know I was terrible to Tim for years; he didn’t deserve that. None of you deserve what I’ve put you through.” He pauses for just long enough that Dick thinks he won’t speak again. “I just wanted it all to stop.” The last part comes out in a whisper; an intimate confession, a dark secret.

“Jay,” Dick murmurs, matching his brother’s volume. Jason doesn’t look away from the dingy white ceiling. Dick moves forward softly and sits on the edge of the bed. “Look at me, Little Wing.”

It’s a long moment before Jason reluctantly drags his gaze to Dick’s face, and his eyes are red and clouded over with the beginning of tears.

“Jason, Bruce and I fight because we care about you. He— he loves you; he just wants you to be safe. And Damian, he knows you’re teasing him. You’re his big brother. If he really thought you wanted to hurt him he would have, I don’t know, stabbed you in your sleep months ago.”

Jason opens his mouth to say more, but Dick powers through before his brother has the chance to verbalize any more self deprecating thoughts.

“Alfred gets sad because he misses you, that’s all. But he gets so excited when you come to visit. He spends hours picking out recipes for you to try and rearranging the bookshelves so that your favorites are right where you’ll see them, because he wants you to know that he hasn’t forgotten about you. And Tim knows it wasn’t you, not really. The Pit... it messes with a person. He gets that. He forgave you a long time ago. Maybe you need to forgive yourself.”

“You don’t get it, Dick. I thought that hurting you would fix me, but it didn’t. What if I can’t be fixed? What if this is just who I am? I can’t live like that. I won’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Jay.”

Jason scoffs, pulls his walls back in, puts on that guarded, defensive anger. “That’s bullshit and you know it. For starters, I fucking died. I was never supposed to come back in the first place.”

“Jason, it doesn’t matter what was or wasn’t supposed to happen!” Dick snaps. “You’re alive, that has to mean something.”

Jason doesn’t offer a response.

They’re in an emotional stalemate, neither one wanting to show their hand, because their whole family is terrible with expressing their feelings unless they’re in a life or death situation—and that’s definitely something they’re going to have to deal with one of these days—but right now Jason not being dead (again) is more important than winning the quiet game so Dick folds his cards and takes center stage.

“Can I tell you about the first time I saw you when you came back to Gotham?” He asks, curling his legs up to sit more fully at the foot of the bed. Jason doesn’t give any sort of confirmation that he’s willing to listen, but he doesn’t say no, so it’s a win. “It was after... after everything with Bruce and... _him_. We had heard chatter that a massive deal was going down in the Narrows, so I went to check it out. You were already there. I guess I knew, on some level, that somehow you were back, and you were the Red Hood, but it didn’t really hit me until I saw you fighting off drug dealers with the same tricks you had always used before. I was supposed to report any sightings of you, but while I was sitting up there and watching you I thought to myself: ‘I don’t care. I don’t care that he’s angry, I don’t care that he’s different, I don’t care that he’s killed. My little brother is alive.’ So I went back to the Cave and I told Bruce that I had handled it and I went out to a bar and got wasted, and when the bartender asked me what the occasion was I told them that I was celebrating.”

Dick lets his voice taper off at the end of the story, wrapping his arms around his knees like a child and praying that his words are sinking in. He’s migrated to the head of the bed over the course of his monologue, and he reaches out to rest a hand on Jason’s arm.

“There has never been a day, not one single moment, that I have not been happy that you are alive,” he says softly, “Every time I see you, that’s always the first thing I think. Even when we’re arguing, I think ‘thank God I get to do this’. I’ve lived in a world without Jason Peter Todd before, and I don’t ever want to do it again.”

The sterile silence that follows is punctuated only by Jason’s careful, controlled breaths.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jason confesses quietly, his face pinched and furrowed. A tear slips from his eye, tired and frustrated and defeated, and he swipes it away just as quickly as it appeared.

Dick nods to himself. “I know,” he says, “I don’t—I don’t have any easy answers, Little Wing. But we’ll figure it out together, okay? I’ll be right here; we’ll all be right here.”

Jason looks at him like he’s trying to detect a lie in Dick’s face. “How can you promise that?” He asks, tone subdued and vulnerable. “If I—if I push you away? If I hurt you again? How can you promise that you won’t leave? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

(What does it say about their family that his little brother has to ask that?)

Dick doesn’t have a good response to that. There’s no amount of verbal reassurances that could convince Jason that the family won’t abandon him, not when he’s already convinced himself that he’s all alone. Instead, Dick reaches forward and gathers his brother into his arms and vows that Jason will never feel alone again.

Jason leans into the hug cautiously, and Dick cards a hand through Jason’s hair like Bruce used to do when they were all so much smaller and things were so much simpler.

Jason’s shoulders shudder, and Dick can feel his shirt dampening where his brother’s face is pressed against it. His clutch on Jason tightens and he chokes on the lump in his throat.

“It’s okay, Jason,” he whispers, “It’s going to be okay.”

(Dick Grayson is full of shit, and things won’t be okay for a while, but for now he settles for holding his little brother, and cries.)

**Author's Note:**

> well? was it everything you hoped and dreamed for?
> 
> [let’s talk about it on tumblr](https://xshadowphantom.tumblr.com/) or in the comments below! ♥︎


End file.
